Jealousie
by Evie1
Summary: An almost perfect murder stirred up feelings between Sara and Grissom. S/G UST. Ch3 updated
1. Chapter 1 Coffee

**Jealousie**   
  
By Evie   
  
PG13, but watch out for unexplainable, disturbing scenes. Mystery/Angst/Romance, GSR (Grissom/Sara), and some UST.   
  
_**Writer's note:** thanks to Caitlin, Nick, Hsuan-Ti, Karla, Calista, professor creepy, Devanie, everybody on Gil/Sara mailing list and JFO.   
**Tribute to**: Sale & Pelletier (the story is named after their short program), Alanis Morissette, Wallflowers, Paul Simon, Mr. Chiang, professors gave forensic lectures, and all the great fan fiction writers out there.   
**Disclaimer**: CSI characters belong to CBS & its affiliates. Violet, Gracie, Neil & extras are mine.  
**Achieve:** All you want, as long as you can leave me a note. evelynee_c@yahoo.com  
_  
Chapter 1   
  
"What do you want, Gracie?" The skinny girl in pale blue cardigan and a pair of fading denim jeans asked her friend, who was sitting next to her, with high-lighted, long brown hair and in a catchy red turtleneck sweater. On the other end of the small table sat a young man, around the same age as the girls, looking casual and clean. The pale girl turned to the boy.   
"Grande Mocha, whipped cream and nuts, Neil?" She gave him a smile as if she could always read his mind. Neil answered with a light nod and a casual smile. Her eyes caught it, without saying anything else. She then turned back to Gracie. The pale girl's expression changed in a millisecond, as if she tried to squeeze out a smile and some compassion, and with an icy distance like the February sky outside of the coffee house, sunny, blue, and cold. The girl in red, Gracie, looked at her friend with slight confusion.  
"Cappuccino," Gracie finally muttered. The pale blue girl nodded. Showing any kindness towards Gracie gradually became a difficult task for her, but she had not lost her cool. "Vanilla, cinnamon...anything?"   
"Vanilla will be great," Gracie blinked her large, innocent eyes; her smile lightened up the small coffee house. "Thank you, Violet."  
"Don't be," Violet kept her distant, "friendly" expression to Gracie, "I've got coupons, and It's my treat." She grabbed her small backpack and left to order coffee.   
After Violet left, Gracie turned to Neil, with desperation. "What's wrong with Violet? She's trying to avoid me or something..." Neil tried to comfort Gracie. He held her hands, trying to tell her that she was just too sensitive, and there was nothing between her and Violet. Gracie was desperate. "Have I done something wrong?"  
"No, you haven't," Neil assured Gracie. "Violet never said bad things about you, and she wasn't upset at all. She is more cheerful than a few months ago." He looked at Gracie, and natural warmth radiated from his eyes, tempting to protect the little sunny being.  
"We used to be best friends," Gracie sighed. "Violet doesn't talk to me anymore. I don't even know what she is up to, if she is happy."  
"It's okay, Gracie..."   
A cheery but cold voice sharply interrupted Neil's words. "Guys, coffee."  
Violet brought three cups of coffee. The thick fragrance filled the table, melting the tension between the three. "Gracie, Cappuccino with vanilla; Neil, Grande mocha with whipped cream and nuts. And mine."  
"What's yours, Violet?"  
"White chocolate Mocha." Violet had to answer that to Gracie. She did not want to upset Neil by acting rude in front of him, although she hated herself for doing so.  
Gracie sipped her cappuccino; the foamy texture could not soften her desperations towards Violet. She put down the cup and looked at Violet, decided to set everything straight before they left the coffee house. Violet calmly enjoyed her mocha with white chocolate with absolutely no intension of speaking to anybody else. Gracie started to feel dizziness. Although she had been working night shifts for the past three weeks at a restaurant cross the town, she had never felt so sleepy before. She had been a little bit under the weather recently, but she believed she was just too tired to keep up with work and school. She could not resist the temptation of closing her eyes. Her eyelids were so heavy; finally they fell and she went into a sound deep sleep.   
Gracie collapsed at the table, and spilled her cappuccino. The brown liquid quickly drew a pool, and some of Gracie's hair unfortunately soaked in the gleaming pool of coffee and milk. She was not so perfect anymore.  
"Gracie, are you okay?" Violet seemed to be surprised.   
"Gracie?" She pushed Gracie, but there was no response. She put her fingers at Gracie's nose. One second. Two seconds. Nothing. Gracie was not breathing. Before Violet realized her best friend had died, she heard Neil yelled on the cell phone...  
"We need an ambulance!"  
  
xxxxXXXXxxx  
  
"Did you say Gracie just collapsed at the table, Miss Vance?" Brass questioned Violet. "Yes," Violet looked visibly shaken. Oddly she remained calm throughout the whole evening of investigation after her best friend died mysteriously, right in front of her eyes. Grissom, with a notepad on one hand and the toolbox on the other, stepped in the coffee house. Brass spotted him, and Grissom greeted him. "Hey, sorry I'm late. The flight back to Las Vegas was delayed. I get here as soon as I could."  
"That's fine. Catherine is on another case, and I figured you were supposed to be back in Vegas forty minutes ago, so I just let the Sara and Nick get here first," said Brass, started to debrief Grissom, "Grace Elizabeth Finley, twenty years old, student of Coupland College, her friends called her Gracie. Collapsed while having coffee with two of her friends, Neil Cagen and Violet Vance, here," Brass pointed to Violet, who had been standing next to the two investigators. Grissom looked at Violet. He thought the pale face was familiar, but he could not place it to a time and location of his known memories. Brass continued.   
"Sara has collected Gracie's coffee cup and the rest of the coffee, and send to the lab for tox screen. Nick is combing the house. "  
"Wait," Grissom interrupted. "How did Gracie die?"  
"There was no sign of cardiac arrest, I just phoned the hospital. The body is on its way to the autopsy. Miss Vance here witnessed the whole thing. Maybe you want to ask her a few questions. I have to go talk to the press and later the shop manager." Brass left Grissom and Violet.  
"Miss Vance, my name is Gil Grissom, from the crime lab," Grissom said, "I am sorry for what happened to your friend." Violet nodded softly. Somehow she was not surprised to see Grissom. Her eyes lowered down, expressing her sorrow and grief. As the darkness slowly set in the coffee shop, Violet seemed to run out of patience and showed her anxiety gradually. Visibly she tried to remain calm, but repeated questionings about Gracie's death was challenging her effort of control.   
"What happened?" Grissom asked. Then he realized that Brass might have asked the very same question.   
"Gracie was drinking coffee and then she collapsed at the table," Violet repeated her answer for the hundredth time, her voice flattened.   
"You were having coffee too, right?" Grissom asked. Violet nodded, "yeah, and Neil, as well."  
"Who brought the coffee to you?"   
"Me. I ordered the coffee because I had a coupon, three for two. And then I brought them back to my friends."  
"Did you or Gracie add anything else to your coffee?"  
"Yeah," Violet nodded again. She was tired, Grissom thought. Violet's voice went softer and weaker, and he could barely hear her. "Gracie wanted vanilla in her cappuccino, not cinnamon. I put some chocolate powder in mine. Neil had nuts on his mocha."   
Let her go for now, Grissom thought. He was sure that he had seen this girl before. Judging from her age, Violet was most likely a college student too. "Are you a student?"  
"Yeah, I am a math major in UNLV."   
"Thank you, Miss Vance." Grissom nodded at her.   
"Can I leave now? I have to see Gracie for the last time." Violet asked politely. Somehow Grissom had this sense that this was just an excuse for Violet to get away from the scene, but he did not dig too much into the thought. He had to looking over the case, to see how Sara and Nick were doing.   
"You would want to talk to Caption Brass there. He was just talking to you."  
Violet thanked Grissom and left for Brass. Grissom turned around and found Sara behind him. "She did it," Sara said sneeringly, "she brought in the coffee, and she poisoned it."  
"Do we have any evidences supporting your theory, Sara?"  
"No," Sara smiled, lightening up the darkening room while the sun sat slowly. Her green sweater made her radiant in the wood-finished setting of the coffee shop. "At least not yet. I bagged those sugar and milk containers over there, sending right back to the Trace of toxin. I am going to dust the prints on the counters later. Anyway, Grissom, Violet was the closest one on the scene and she is definitely a suspect."  
"First one next to the body," Grissom said, with a knowingly smile. "How about this other guy, Neil?"  
"Oh, yeah, he is a friend to the girls. Apparently three of them have been buddies since junior year in high school..."  
"Sara! Hey Griss!" Nick was on the other side of the coffee house. He saw Grissom and waved at him. "Check this out."  
Grissom and Sara went over to the entrance of women's washroom. "Geez, Nick, you know you are not supposed to be in here," Sara teased.   
"Are you kidding me?" Nick replied with a mysterious look. "I did some of my best work in here. What does this look like to you?"  
Some loose white powders on the floor of the bathroom. If not for the dark colour of the slate floor, it was really hard to tell by the dim light. "Can be sugar, diet-sugar...this is a coffee shop, Nick."  
"The question is," Nick said, "what was sugar doing in a washroom?"  
"Can be drugs. This is downtown Las Vegas we are talking about."  
"Tape---" Before Grissom finished his sentence, Nick and Sara already pulled out the tape lifter and lifted the loose powders. Sara looked at the grains against the washroom light. "Very fine grains, probably diet sugar or...." She turned around and looked at Grissom. "Didn't Gracie have vanilla in her cappuccino?"  
  
  
  
(1/?)  



	2. Chapter 2 All I Want

Jealousie, 2/?

**Author**: Evelyn Chung (aka Evie)  evelynee_c@yahoo.com

**Archival**: Go ahead.

**_Author's note, disclaimer_**_: Big thank to Devanie and Kasey!!! CSI is not mine, blah, blah, blah. My creations are ….,, including one Ivan Katz. I know I promised S/G UST, and here it is…sorry for the slow update, but real life is not an easy deal either. The song Sara hummed is Joni Mitchell's "All I Want" from the album "Blue" --- not mine either. I made up that little tech talk Grissom did with Sara, but I think it was not too far away from latest development in forensic physics. I made up International Journal of Forensic Physics, too. They really should have one in real life. Physics rocks._

_Grissom out of character? Maybe a bit, but he was very tired from the flight and he did not have coffee.._

_Please R&R --- deeply appreciated!_

Chapter 2

Realizing that anything on the craft counter could be crucial evidence, Sara rushed over and started planning her next move.  Having taken photos before she bagged those sugar, vanilla and chocolate powder bottles, Sara now carefully laid out rectangular grids on the top of the counter, and tape-lifted every single grains of powder and finger prints, one grid by another. Her eyes fixed on her job, and her delicate hands worked gracefully. 

Nick was dusting the entire washroom for figure prints after he discovered the white powders.  Knowing that his team was focusing on their jobs, Grissom walked around the coffee shop. The wood theme of the shop and the soft dim lights made him sleepy especially after a long flight from New York, but he knew that he had to be awake.  The tempting fragrance of coffee still immersed every cubic centimeter of the room, but it would be wrong if he asked for a cup of coffee from this coffee house --- the crime scene. It would be tempering with evidences, he thought with amusement.  Behind the counter, Brass was questioning a boy, who was wearing awkward uniform hat and apron. Glancing Grissom, Brass called out for him. "Griss, take a rest, go home; you look tired. Sara and Nick have the crime scene under their control." 

Grissom sighed. Sara and Nick started without him, and they seemed to be able to handle the scene without him too. He trusted the capability of his crew. "Thank you, Jim," he nodded to Brass. "I will see you tomorrow." 

 Grissom walked quietly back to Sara. Her serene face still concentrated on her task; her voice slowly collected a melody, flowing calmly, softly in the noisy coffee house. 

_" __I am on a lonely road and I am traveling   
Traveling, traveling, traveling   
Looking for something, what can it be?"_

He always loved to hear Sara singing. Singing was a sign of Sara's brain at work; she only hummed when she was one hundred percent into her work. Besides her perfect pitches and soft tone, there was something about her singing, perhaps the expression of her free spirit, which moved Grissom all the time. Quietly he stood next to a disposal bin close to the craft counter, without disturbing Sara, seeing how the lights bouncing on her hair, and observing her work.

Sensing Grissom stood next to her, Sara stopped humming. Still focusing on her tasks, Sara asked, without turning her head. "How was the conference in New York?"

Her question caught Grissom off guard when he was admiring Sara's graceful movement in the soft dimming light. Retrieving his gazing eyes even though Sara was not looking at his way, Grissom cleared his throat. "It was great," he answered, with a smile "They demonstrated new applications in Forensic Physics using different wavelengths of laser rays to find latent finger prints on cloths and papers, combining a CCD highly sensitive in those specific wavelengths…" 

Sara stopped her work in her hands, turned around to Grissom, with a big smile on her face, "...and the CCD is commonly used only in astronomy until recently. _International Journal of Forensic Physics_, last December." 

"I knew you would like that," said Grissom, pleased to see Sara's sparkling eyes shinning because of his words. He had expected the reaction since he thought of reporting the finding to Sara during the conference.  "I will bring you to the conference next year."

"Will I have to share a seat with your insects samples?"

"If you insist." He answered with a smile; Sara chuckled lightly. She always found his untimely sense of humor extremely amusing, sometimes even shocking. Usually Grissom would start with seemingly unrelated facts regarding the case --- a story from Sun Tzu, a quote from Buddha, or a line from any Shakespeare's plays. She could always find the relations between them like snapping fingers and giggled in her mind till she saw Nick or Warrick's blank faces. She remembered what he said at the hockey rink. Beauty… since he met her. What would that mean still bothered her every time he made her laugh, like a shadow of confusion. Sara gave him a toned-down smile, trying to suppress the chuckling. She turned back to her tape-lifting task. "so, Brass had sent you home?"

"Yeah, " said Grissom. Something in the disposal bin caught his attention; it was one of those paper coffee cup holders that could hold four cups at the same time. He bended down and reached in the bin.

"You need the rest, Griss. We can take it from here." Sara said, hearing the disturbance from the bin. She turned around. "Grissom?"

Grissom stood there, holding the coffee holder. Sara figured it out before Grissom could speak. "There may be residuals of poison and the suspect on it. Evidence. I am bagging it."

XXxxXXxxXXxxXXxxXXxx

Interrogation Room

"State your name and birthday." Brass asked the boy from the coffee house. The boy had acne that made everybody wonder if modern medicine was still not enough; his hair was intentionally gelled, but was pressed into a funny shape by the uniform hat from the coffee house. His long hands and legs always seemed to be in the wrong places. He nervously shrugged his shoulders and cleared his throat.

"Ivan Katz; July Fifteenth, Nineteen Eighty Two."

"What is your job at Desert Ground Coffee?"

"I make coffee and take orders at the counter." Ivan was scared. He had never been in a police station before, not to mention the interrogation room. He nervously looked at the huge mirror on one wall beside him. Those cop shows always had mirrors like that, he thought, and there were people seeing everything from the other side. Maybe this was all a conspiracy, some government experiments that accidentally killed Gracie….

"How do you know Grace Finley?"

"We were in the same classes, in Coupland College. She was a very nice girl…" 

Nick looked into Ivan's eyes; somehow he felt sorry for this little nervous nerd. "Ever tried to ask her out?"

Ivan was embarrassed, "Yeah, but she said she already had a boyfriend in Stanford." 

"Stanford," Nick said, "This boyfriend of hers is somethin', hum? Somebody you can never live up to?" 

"I don't even know if that's a real boyfriend or not. She was always with Neil…" Ivan sensed the accusation in the stall air of the room. He was panicked. "No, no, if you were saying that I killed Gracie, I didn't!"

"You could not get the girl, and you served coffee; motivation plus chances, you know what we are saying," Brass said.

"No, I didn't do it," Ivan said with determination, "I didn't even know Gracie was in the coffee house till she passed out! It was her friend who ordered the coffee. I didn't even take her order."

"How did you know she was Gracie's friend?" Brass asked

"I saw her visiting Gracie once. Playing badminton."

"Did she recognize you when she was at the counter?"

"I don't know, maybe," Ivan said, with a scared tone. "I felt her staring at my back. That's why I saw her. That woman gives me creeps."

XxXXxxXXxxXXxxXXxxXX

(2/?)


	3. Chapter 3 Looking Elsewhere

**Jealousie** Chapter 3   


By Evie

_**Note & Disclaimer**: CSI is still not mine just like my long-time crush. BIG, HUGE hands to **Hope** and **Dev** for their help & support. For **all the people who have liked the story**, I deeply appreciate your encouraging words and I will not let you down! I wrote (the fic), I researched (the poison), and I experimented (the powder). Nick is not the Joey Tribbiani of CSI although I still put him in the plot-basement, and Warrick is still hosting "All Warrick, All The Time" while Catherine goes on tour with Slim Shady (ref see TWoP One Sentence Story). They cancelled Dark Angel. Arrgh._

=== ===

(Unknown journal entry)

_... Darkness eats us all, slowly and corruptly. There is no use of remembering the glory days. Uncertainty is where we stand, where we are not even entitled to anger, hatred, and the ability to love. Nothing is left here. Nothing is justified. How could one not seeing the downside of things only because wanting to believe a better outcome, only to fall in a deeper hell and never see the light? ...._

=== ====

HOSPITAL

Violet and Neil stood in the emergency room. Doctors and nurses had left the room after they pronounced the time of death. Quietly Gracie's body lay on the bed. The chattering and screaming from adjacent rooms blurred in the cold, empty space; the silence between two friends made the world around them surreal. Emotions were hardly expressive when they faced death. For a long time Violet and Neil stood side-by-side, staring at the deadly, bluish-white skin of Gracie's body, silently, without a word, without a sound, and without a tear. Finally, Neil whispered to Violet.

"You need a moment alone with her."

He turned around, pushed the door open and walked out the emergency room. Waiting by the door, he gave Violet an understanding glance through the glass window. Violet nodded at him, and then slowly moved to Gracie's bedside; she carefully picked up Gracie's porcelain-like wrist. The coldness of death seemed to shock her, but Violet proceeded to hold Gracie's hand. Death had not taken away beauty from Gracie; Violet felt the charming smoothness of the skin. Slowly, Violet let her own warmth flew onto Gracie's skin, knowing the body would remain cold forever. She leaned over to Gracie's head; she could almost taste the fragrance, mixed coffee smell, from Gracie's hair.

"I am sorry, honey," Violet whispered into Gracie's senseless ear. "but it's the only way."

Violet retrieved her head and turned around to meet her eyes with Neil's outside the door. Solemn and motionless, her eyes were like solid black glass, instead of a lake full of grief. Violet slowly pushed the door open. The noise of reality suddenly flooded over her. She clung onto Neil, who held her tightly, as if he would lose her. She let his warmth overwhelmed her, feeling the life of a human. She had earned this moment.

"Don't cry," he said softly to her ear.

"Never"

=== === ===

THE NEXT AFTERNOON

"Greg, what did you get?" Sara rushed in the trace lab. "Depending on what you are looking for." Greg handed her a thick folder of lab results.

"Toxins," Sara said while she was reading through the results. "Water, sugar, other complex carbohydrates ... C8H8O3, that's vanilla ... and caffeine, the safe amount."

Greg looked at Sara. He tried to act confident in front of her, but he was not sure what Sara was up to. He tried to hold up his head.

"Nothing more than a normal cup of cappuccino, with vanilla."

"No way," Sara flipped through other pages. There were no traces of poisons in the bottles and food samples from the crime scene. The grains on the counter were what they were supposed to be: sugar, vanilla, chocolate, and cinnamon.

"How about the powders Nick found in the washroom?" Sara asked, anticipating a conclusive result.

"That was a hard one, but, " Greg said with a smug smile, leaned over his desk, and looked straight at Sara. "Sara, remember to powder your nose."

Confused, Sara touched her nose. Realizing this was one of Greg's jokes, she quickly put down her hand and asked accusingly. "Excuse me?"

Afraid that Sara might be mad at him, Greg quickly switched to a more serious persona. "What Nick found was cosmetics. Face powder. Very fine and light stuffs. I ran the formula through the national data base and was able to identify the manufacturer and the brand."

"And I assume it's not poisonous," Sara asked, with frustration. Greg nodded when Nick walked in the lab.

"Some lady dropped her powder on the floor," said Nick. He explained to Sara and Greg with crime scene photos he took. "See the pattern here? The compact powder, with the case, hit the floor here, leaving a more intense distribution in this area, and then the loose powder grains radiated out in this shape. A tiny chunk of the compact powder was chipped out here."

This was impossible; all the evidences appeared to be too normal to be true, Sara thought. "How about the cashier you and Brass interviewed last night?"

Nick shook his head. "That little nerd had nothing to do with it as far as I know. He had no prior knowledge of Gracie's appearance in the coffee house. We didn't find anything on him either." Patience --- Grissom once told her that it was the most important component in poisoning. It seemed to her that Gracie had died of poisoning. Most poisons took some time to finally kill a victim. What if...

"Wait," Sara's eyes brightened by her thoughts. Off searching for Grissom, she said to herself while walking out the lab quickly, and ignoring the presence of her colleagues unknowingly. "Maybe Gracie didn't die from anything in the coffee house..."

Making no effort to stop her, Nick and Greg watched her disappeared at the end of the hallway and let her mutter faded with noises in the office.

Nick and Greg exchanged a glance. Nick shook his head.

"That Grissom look,"

"and that Grissom walk." said Greg, with wonder in his eyes.

=== === 

AUTOPSY ROOM

Grissom, Sara and Dr. Robbins stood around the autopsy table. Gracie's lifeless body peacefully lay on the cold metal platform; once vibrant with life, her hair now reflected the cold light of the sterile room. Her skin already turned blue.

"No external bruising or injuries; multiple organs failure, internal bleeding, circulatory vessels collapses...The victim probably experienced nausea, muscle aches, weakness, and difficulties in breathing ..." While Dr. Robbins explained the cause of death, Sara imagined the cells exploded, veins flattened, blood stopped flowing, and then the entire body stopped functioning. Trying to divert her attention from those horrible images, she looked up at Grissom, whose wrinkles knotted tightly on his forehead, behind his elegant glasses. How could she smooth these wrinkles? Sara thought for a nano-second, and then quickly put her thoughts back together.

"She was young and relatively healthy, according to her medical record." said Sara. "Do you know what caused these conditions?"

"Most likely... poison." said Grissom. Dr. Robbins nodded with approval. Grissom continued. "We had a case like this before. The victim accidentally poisoned herself with ricin."

"Well, if there is still any poison left in her stomach, we will know when the tox report come back tomorrow afternoon. I sent a sample of her stomach content earlier this morning." said Dr. Robbins.

"Tomorrow afternoon..." Sara was slightly frustrated. "Even Greg worked faster than that."

Trying very hard not to laugh, Dr. Robbins was definitely amused by the "Greg" notion. On the other side of the table, Grissom thought, of course our "Greggo" worked faster than that. Greg had been extra-committed to his work recently. Amazingly, he was able to put together the whole analysis for all the evidences Sara and Nick got from the crime scene in less than 24 hours. From all the evidences he gathered from Greg's recent behaviors towards Sara, Grissom suspected that Greg must have put in a lot of overtime for Sara --- no, for this case. Sensing Sara's impatience, he tilted his head and smiled at her.

"Sara," Grissom reminded her, "Remember what's the most important component in poisoning?"

"Patience, I know," Sara was anxious. If there were another crime scene, she knew the evidences might have been compromised. She hated when the situation was too late for her to save. "Grissom, nothing we found in the coffee house was pointing at poisoning. It took time for the poison to actually kill a person. Gracie did not die from anything in the coffee house. She was poisoned somewhere first."

"We just got ourselves another crime scene, then." Grissom sank deeply into his thoughts. "The question is: Where and how was she drugged?"

TBC (3/?)


End file.
